Chance, Necessity and Providence

Schmidt Number: S-3101

On-line since: 15th October, 2015

Consciousness in Sleeping and Waking States

27th August, 1915DornachGA 163: 2 of 8

In the preceding lectures, I have been calling attention to the fact
that there will still be a great deal to say about a certain problem or
question, even though it has already been the subject of discussion here
from a great variety of viewpoints. That is the question of the alternating
states of waking and sleeping in human beings. I have repeatedly
spoken in public lectures of how this problem of sleep has occupied
a more materialistically oriented science also, and how it is being
handled. On several occasions I have referred to some of the various
attempts that have been made to solve it. There is the so-called exhaustion
theory, which is only one of the many that have been advanced in recent
decades. This theory holds that we secrete substances resulting from
the wear and tear of work and of our other activities during waking
life, and that the sleeping state somehow eliminates these exhaustion
products, which are then formed anew in the following period of waking
consciousness.

Now we must always take the position that
such a theory — I mean, what it describes — does not have
to be wrong from the standpoint of spiritual science just because of
its purely materialistic origin. The materialistic rightness of this
particular theory need not now be gone into at any further length; other
theories have been advanced in the same matter, as I have just mentioned.
But from the standpoint of spiritual science no question will be raised
as to whether such a process can take place, whether exhaustion products
are really secreted during day-waking consciousness and destroyed again
at night. This actual process will not be brought into question or further
discussed. It must be a main concern of spiritual science to examine
a problem, to study life's riddles, in a way that really relates the
standpoint from which they are studied to the insights that can be gained
in a particular age. That will provide the right basis for bringing
the right light to bear on facts such as the secretion of exhaustion
products. In most of life's problems — indeed, in all of them
— the point is to know what questions to ask, to avoid pursuing
a mistaken line of questioning.

In the case of the alternation between sleeping
and waking the development of a viewpoint from which to study these
two human states is all-important. And the proper light can be brought
to bear upon certain phenomena of human life only if matters introduced
in a very early phase of our spiritual scientific efforts are kept in
mind. In the very early days I called attention to the fact that if
we want to get an overview of world evolution we have mainly to consider
seven stages of consciousness, seven life-conditions and seven form-
states. Certain life-questions can be answered simply by considering
changes in form; other questions can be illuminated by studying life-metamorphoses.
But certain phenomena in life, certain facts of life cannot be illuminated
any other way than by rising to a consideration of the various states
of consciousness involved.

It is quite natural, in considering the problem
of waking and sleeping, to concern ourselves with questions of the difference
involved in the two states of consciousness. For we have certainly learned
from a great variety of studies that we are here dealing with different
states of consciousness, so that the question of consciousness is the
all-important one here. We must realize that our most important concern
in dealing with this question is to base it on the matter of consciousness.
We will have to ask ourselves what the real difference is between the
waking and the sleeping states.

And this is what we find: When we are awake
— we need only to register what each one of us is conscious of
— we look at the world around us and perceive it. And we will
be able to say that when we are in the day- waking state, we cannot
observe our own inner life as we do our surroundings. I have often called
your attention to the fact of what a crude illusion it would be if we
were to conceive of the study of anatomy as leading to observation of
the inner man. Only what is external in us, though it lies beneath our
skin, can be studied by material anatomy; our inner aspect cannot be
studied during ordinary waking consciousness. Even what a person comes
to know of himself while he is awake is the world's outer aspect, or,
more exactly, that aspect of him that belongs to the external world.

But if we now observe the human being from
the contrasting aspect of the sleeping state, its essential characteristic,
as you can see from the various discussions that have previously taken
place here, is that he is observing himself. While we are in that condition,
the object of our attention is the human being; our consciousness is
occupied with ourselves. If you examine some of the most commonplace
phenomena from this standpoint, you will find them readily comprehensible.

Now if what materialistic science states
on the subject of sleeping and waking were all that could be said about
it, it would seem to contradict an observation I once made here, namely,
that an independently wealthy person who hasn't made any particular
effort is more often seen to fall asleep at lectures than someone who
has been exerting himself at work. This observation would have to be
wrong if tiredness were the real cause of sleep. What we have to consider
here is that the coupon clipper who listens to a lecture is not focusing
his day- waking interest on it, is perhaps not particularly interested
in it, may even find it impossible to take an interest in it because
he doesn't understand it and is therefore justified in his apathy. He
is much more interested in himself. So he withdraws his attention from
the lecture to concentrate upon himself. One could, of course, ask:
why particularly upon himself? That too can easily be explained. There
are certain reasons why the lecture doesn't interest him, and they are
usually that he is more interested in other aspects of life than in
those under discussion in the lecture, or, at least, in their relevance.
But the lecture keeps him from occupying himself with what would otherwise
be interesting him. A person who has no interest in hearing a lecture
might conceivably prefer to spend the time eating oysters instead of
attending the lecture. Perhaps he is more interested in the experience
of eating oysters than in that provided by the lecture. But the lecture
disturbs him; there is no way for him to eat oysters if he attends it.
He behaves as though he wanted to hear it, but it keeps him from eating
oysters. Since he can't be eating them, he settles for the only thing
available besides the lecture that is disturbing him. The hour ahead
is taken up with something that he can only hear, something
without interest for him. So he turns his attention to the only other
available interest: his own inner being, and enjoys himself!
For his falling asleep is self-enjoyment.

You can gather from what we have studied
that sleeping consciousness is still at the stage that prevailed in
man during the ancient sun period. It is the same consciousness we share
with plants. We know both these facts from previous lectures.

Now our sleeping man at the lecture is not
in the same state of consciousness in which we would find him if he
were enjoying the external world. He is working his way back into sub-consciousness
as it were. But that doesn't matter; he enjoys himself anyhow. And his
enjoyment comes from his interest in himself. So we must find it understandable
that sleep takes over, not as a result of inner weariness but because
his interest moves away from the outer scene, the lecture or the concert
or whatever, to what does interest him. This is always the fact of the
matter if one studies the alternation between sleeping and waking with
thoroughness, and in its inner aspect.

When we are awake, we may look upon our condition
as one in which we turn our attention outward, to the world around us.
We withdraw our interest from our inner life.

The opposite is true of the sleeping state.
Attention is directed inward to the self and withdrawn from what lies
outside it. Since we have left our bodies during sleep, we actually
see them from outside.

We can, as you see, trace the alternation
between sleeping and waking to another cause, and say that we live in
successive cycles, in one of which our interest is awake to the world
outside us, and in the other to our inner world. This alternation between
outer and inner is one that belongs every bit as much to our life as
the fact that the sun shines on the earth and then goes down, leaving
it in darkness, belongs to the earth's life. In the latter case the
spatial constellation is the factor involved in the alternation between
light and darkness, bringing about the cycle of daytime and nighttime.

Now you can easily see how mistaken it would
be to say that the day is the cause of the night, and the night of the
day. That would be what I have described to you in preceding lectures
as a worm's philosophy. It is simply nonsense to call the day the cause
of the night and vice versa; both result from the regular alternation
in the spatial relationship between sun and earth. It makes just as
little sense to say that sleep is the cause of waking, and waking the
cause of sleep. Just as in the earth's case the only thing that makes
sense is to say that it undergoes an alternation between day and night
because of its position in space, so human life undergoes an alternation
between interest for the inner and interest for the outer scene. These
conditions have to succeed each other; anything else is out of the question.
Life decrees that human beings must focus their attention on their surroundings
for awhile, and then turn it inward, just as the sun, descending in
the west, has no choice about what its further course will be.

But we enter a realm here where the following
must always be kept in mind: The sun has to make a certain period of
hours into daytime, and another period into night. But human beings
are in a position to vary things and upset routines, like the coupon
clipper who sleeps even though he isn't tired, voluntarily turning his
attention inward, enjoying himself, really enjoying his body, or like
a student cramming for examinations who, to some extent, overcomes his
need for normal sleep. Many students sleep very little before examinations.
But this brings up the big questions we will be concerning ourselves
with, questions about necessity in outer nature, questions about the
frequently discussed subject of chance, both in nature and in human
life, questions about providence that apply to the entire universe.

As soon as we touch on the sphere of human
life we come upon an element that belongs in the field of necessity,
something necessary to man if he is to live and have his being in the
world. There is much that we will be discussing in regard to this.

What I've been telling you has been said
not only — and please note the “not only” as well
as a “partly”— to call your attention to the fact
that we must try to get a proper perspective on the alternation between
sleeping and waking. This means asking what sort of consciousness we
have when we are awake. The answer is that the outer world rather than
the human being is its object, that we forget ourselves and turn our
attention to the surrounding world. Conversely, consciousness in sleep
is such that we forget the world outside us and observe ourselves. But
we return first to the state of consciousness we had on the sun; the
fact that we enjoy ourselves is of secondary importance.

But that is not the only reason why I have
referred to this perspective; it was also to call attention to the importance
of noting the ways consciousness is related to the world and to the
fact that we can come to know the essential nature of certain things
only by inquiring into the kind of consciousness involved. It is, for
example, quite impossible to know anything of importance about the structure
of the hierarchical order of higher spiritual beings unless we concern
ourselves with their consciousness. If you go through the various lecture
cycles, you will see what trouble was taken to characterize the consciousness
of angels, archangels, and so on. For it is essential in any study to
give careful thought to what constitutes the right approach. A person
might say that he is quite familiar with the hierarchical order: first
comes the human being, then the higher rank of angels, then the still
higher archangels, then the archai, and so on. He writes them down in
ascending order and claims to understand: each hierarchy is one step
above the one before it. But if that were all one knew about these beings,
one would know as little about the hierarchical order as one knows about
the levels of a house from the fact that each higher story is superimposed
upon the one below it; one could make a drawing that would fit both
cases. What really matters is to note the salient facts in the case
under study. We only know something about these higher beings if we
are familiar with the state of consciousness in which the various hierarchies
live and if we can describe it. This must form the basis of a study
of them.

The same thing holds true in the study of
human beings. We know very little indeed about our inner being if we
can say nothing further on the subject of the sleeping state than that
our ego and astral body are outside our physical and etheric bodies.
Though that is true, it is a totally abstract pronouncement, since it
conveys no more information about the difference between sleeping and
waking than one possesses in the case of a full and an empty beer glass;
in the one case there is beer in it, and in the other the beer is elsewhere.
It is true enough that the ego and the astral body have left the physical
and etheric bodies of a sleeping person, but we must be of a will to
go on to ever further and more inclusive concrete insights. We try to
do this, for example, when we describe the alternation of interest in
the two states of consciousness.

I once made you a light red drawing of man,
and then a blue one in illustration of my statements to the effect that,
for the clairvoyant, the human being is in the hollow part shown in
the drawings. If a person falls asleep and possesses a higher consciousness
(it can be just the beginning of it; but even then we can really perceive,
for we begin by observing ourselves), he sees this hollow part. At such
moments we see clearly how mistaken the belief is that we are made of
compact matter, that what seems to day-waking consciousness to be substantial
is actually empty space. Of course, we must keep in mind that human
beings are really outside their bodies during sleep. So they see the
empty space surrounded by this aura. They are not in their bodies; they
are looking on from outside them, so they see the empty space within
the aura. It is a shaped yet hollow space. Looked at from outside, other
kinds of spaces are of course filled with something. Therefore a person
naturally appears in the shape he has when looked at with day-waking
consciousness, but he is seen surrounded by what might be described
as an auric cloud, an aura. We don't see him entirely clearly at first,
but rather in an auric cloud that we must first penetrate: we see an
auric cloud, outlining a shadowy form. It is as though we see the person
in a more or less brilliant aura; viewed from outside, the space occupied
by his physical form is left empty. I will resort to a trivial comparison
to convey an adequate impression of this phenomenon, perceived when
we become conscious during sleep. We have all had the experience of
going about in a city when it is foggy or misty and have seen how the
lights there appeared as though in a rainbow aura, without sharp outlines.
This impression of lights like empty spaces in the surrounding fog is
an experience everyone has had, and it is very similar to what I have
been describing. The area imaginatively perceived is seen as though
in a fog or mist, and the physical human beings are the empty dark spaces
there inside it.

We may say, then, that we see human beings
through an aura when we attain to clairvoyance in our sleep. We became
materialists when we learned to look directly at our fellow human beings
instead of seeing their auras. That was brought about as a result of
luciferic developments that made it possible to begin to see ourselves
with day-waking consciousness. And this helps us to understand an important
passage in the Old Testament, the one that says that people went about
naked prior to the seduction by Lucifer. This is not to be taken as
meaning that their state of awareness in their nakedness at all resembled
what yours would be if you were to do the same thing now; it means that
they previously saw the surrounding aura. So they had no such awareness
of the human being as we would have now if people were to run about
in the nude, for they perceived human beings spiritually clothed; the
aura was the clothing. And when that innocence was lost and human beings
were condemned to a materialistic way of life, meaning that they could
no longer perceive auras, they saw what they had not seen while the
aura was still perceptible, and they began to replace auras with clothing.
That is the origin of clothing; garments replaced auras.

And it is actually a good thing in our materialistic
age to know that people clothed themselves for no other reason than
to emulate their aura with what they wore. That is especially the case
with rituals, for everything that is worn on such occasions represents
some part of the aura. You can see for yourselves, too, that Mary and
Joseph and Mary Magdalene wear quite different garments. One wears a
rose-colored dress with a blue mantle, the other a blue robe with a
red mantle. Mary Magdalene is often portrayed in a yellow garment by
those who were still familiar with the old tradition or who still retained
remnants of clairvoyance. An attempt was always made to reproduce the
aura of the individual in question, for people were aware that the aura
ought to be indicated, ought to find expression in the clothing worn.

An aberration typical of our materialistic
age afflicts certain circles who see an ideal in doing away with clothing
and who regard the so-called nudity cult as extremely wholesome; materialism
can always be counted upon to draw the practical conclusions of its
thinking. There is actually a magazine devoted to this cause that calls
itself Beauty. A misunderstanding is at the root of this; the magazine
believes itself to be serving something other than the crassest, coarsest
materialism. But that is all that can be served when reality is seen
exclusively in what external, sense-perceptible nature has brought forth.

The wearing of clothes originated as a means
of preserving in ordinary life the state of consciousness that sees
human beings surrounded by an aura. We should therefore find out where
the contemporary tendency to do away with clothing comes from. It comes
from a total absence of any imagination in clothing ourselves. No idealism
is involved, but rather a lack of any imagination where beauty is concerned.
For clothes are intended to beautify the wearer, and to see beauty only
in unclothed human beings would, for our time, reveal an instinct for
materialism. I intend at a later date to contrast this with the situation
existing in Greek civilization. That civilization provides us with the
best means of studying this matter in the light of what has just been
said.

Now it becomes more and more important for
people to learn how various conditions of consciousness provide insights
for a study of life. Sleeping and waking are alternations in states
of consciousness. But while sleeping and waking bring about sharply
marked changes in our state of consciousness, smaller changes occur
as well. Day-waking consciousness also has its nuances, some of which
tend more toward sleep, others more toward the waking state. We are
all aware that there are individuals given to spending a large part
of their lives not actually asleep, but drowsing. We say of them that
they are “asleep,” meaning that they go through life as
though in a dream. You can tell them something, and in no time at all
they have forgotten it. We can't call it real dreaming, but things flit
by them as though in a dream and are instantly forgotten. This drowsiness
is a nuance of consciousness bordering on sleep. But if somebody beats
another up, that is a nuance that goes beyond the state of ordinary
sleep and doesn't remain just a mental image. Life presents a variety
of nuances of consciousness; we could set up a whole scale of them.
But they all have their own rightness.

A lot depends on our developing a feeling
for these nuances. A person occasionally has such a sense if he is born
healthy and grows up in a healthy state. It is important to have a certain
sensitivity for how seriously to take this or that in life, how much
or how little attention to pay to it, what matters to take a stand on
and what to keep to oneself. All this has to do with the asserting of
consciousness, and such nuances do indeed exist. And it is very important
to know, as we go through life, that life can develop in us the delicate
sensitivity that tells us how much consciousness to focus on any particular
matter, how strongly to stress something. We really make important progress
both in leading a healthy life and in the possibility of contributing
to orderly conditions in our environment if we pay attention to how
strongly we should focus our consciousness on this or that. The state
of consciousness we are in when we are among people and talking with
them in an ordinary way about various matters is different from the
state of consciousness in which a sense of delicacy forbids our discussing
certain other subjects. These are two distinctly differing nuances of
consciousness. But the presence of a sense of the fitness of things
is simply another state of consciousness, and it is endlessly important
in life to have an awareness of such considerations. I'd like to show
you at hand of an example that there are indeed individuals who possess
understanding for such nuances of consciousness.

Today is the 27th of August, Hegel's birthday,
and tomorrow, the 28th, is Goethe's; they follow on one another's heels.
Now Hegel wrote an
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences
among other works, and a first edition of it was published.
[Note 01]
This book is noteworthy in a certain respect. There would be
absolutely no point in opening it at random and reading this or that
page; you could make exactly as much sense out of it as out of Chinese.
A statement taken at random from a page of Hegel would convey nothing
whatsoever. In a lecture in Berlin last winter I explained how little
sense it made to divorce one of Hegel's sentences from its context.
For sentences in Hegel's encyclopedia make sense only when one has skipped
over everything that poses riddles for the human mind and arrived at
the place where Hegel says, “Considered in and of itself, being
is the concept,” and so on. If one begins there and exposes oneself
to all the rest of it, then and only then does every sentence make sense
at the place where it stands; each sentence owes its meaning to its
place in the whole.

Well, so Hegel had his encyclopedia published.
In the preface to the first edition he explained why he arranged it
as he did. When there had to be a second edition, Hegel wrote a preface
to that. Now an author can sometimes have quite an experience of life
between two editions of a book. For even if one has already become acquainted
with one's fellow men, one feels oneself duty bound not to see them
entirely in the light in which they sometimes reveal themselves; and
besides, one can tell quite a bit about them from the reception the
book is given. That was true in Hegel's case also. So then he wrote
a preface to the second edition, and there are important passages in
it. I am going to read you two such, one the very first sentence; the
second, sentences from the second page. The preface to the second edition
begins as follows: “The well-disposed reader will find that several
sections have been revised and developed in sharper definition. I have
taken pains therein to make my presentation a less formal one and to
bring abstract concepts closer to the layman's understanding, making
them more concrete by using more extensive exoteric annotations.”
He was concerned, you see, to explain esoteric matters exoterically.
The book continues:

The extreme brevity necessitated by a
summarization of material quite sufficiently abstruse to begin with
nevertheless leaves this second edition with the same goal as the
first, namely, to serve as a preliminary text requiring further
exegesis in the form of lectures. The title “encyclopedia”
usually presupposes a less rigid adherence to scientific method
and a more general structuring. But it lies in the nature of the
subject matter that logical aspects must remain the basis of the
presentation.

There were all too many occasions and
provocations that seemed to require me to clarify my philosophical
position with respect to the spiritual and the insipid concerns
of contemporary culture, a thing to be undertaken only exoterically
and only in a preface; for even if these concerns claim a relationship
to philosophy, they do not do so scientifically, which means not
at all; they approach it from without, and remain outside it. It
is uncongenial and mistaken to involve oneself in a situation so
alien to science. All the clarifying and explaining one might do
fails to further that insight which can alone form the object of
true knowledge. But it may be useful or necessary to comment on
various phenomena.

This is proof that Hegel tried to shape the
first edition in what was for him an esoteric manner, and that it was
only in the second edition that he added what seemed to him exoteric
aspects. Our time often possesses no understanding for these exoteric
and esoteric elements; it doesn't so easily embark on the course Hegel
travelled, who wanted to keep to himself everything originating in his
own subjective view of a matter. And it was only after he had built
up a complete organismic structure and freed it from any subjective
aspects that he was willing to present this objective material in his
book; he remained of the opinion that one's own path in achieving an
insight was something that should be kept a private matter. In this,
he evidenced sensitive feeling for the difference between two states
of consciousness: that into which he wanted to enter when addressing
the public, and that other developed for communing with himself. And
then the world urged him, as the world so often does, in creating undesirable
outcomes, to overcome this embarrassment of his for a certain period.
For what lay at the bottom of his feeling was embarrassment, impelling
him to silence about the way he had arrived at his concepts. As you
know, embarrassment usually makes people blush. We would have to say,
meaning something spiritual thereby, that Hegel blushed spiritually
when he had to write a thing like his preface to the second edition.
Here you see one of those nuances of consciousness over which embarrassment
extends.

I wanted to demonstrate with an example how
nuances of consciousness show up in life, including nuances in actions
of the will and in what we do. We need to become ever more fully aware
that life really must consist of such nuances, that we have to relate
differences in states of consciousness to everything we do. Sleeping
and waking involve very marked differences. But there can also be a
nuance of consciousness in which we are aware that a matter concerns
not just ourselves but the surrounding world as well; another, in which
we confront the world with awareness that we must tread gently; and
still another in which we know that what we do must be done with ourselves
alone, or only in the most intimate circle.

The concepts and ideas we garner from spiritual
science really make a difference in life. They teach us to recognize
subtle subjective differences, provided we aren't disposed to know them
only from the usual standpoint, realizing instead that a serious concern
with spiritual science makes us a gift of this capacity for practical
tact. But that serious concern with spiritual science must be present.
It is of course absent if we project into spiritual science the sensations,
desires, and instincts that ordinarily prevail. If that is the case,
what is derived from spiritual science amounts to little more than can
be garnered from any other indifferent source of learning. I've been
speaking of nuances of consciousness and saying that there are nuances
within the waking states very close to sleep. But it can happen that
a person lacks the inclination to concern himself with certain details
and subtleties, as in the case of the coupon clipper in yesterday's
lecture. One may enjoy reading books or lecture cycles, but experience
a dwindling consciousness at certain places in the text, and drowsiness
sets in; the conscientiousness required to overcome such a condition
is simply not there to call upon.

That is why I have continued to stress that
things should not be made too easy for people desiring to involve themselves
with spiritual science. We hear again and again that books should be
written in a popular style, that Theosophy is not popular enough.
[Note 02]
I discern behind such comments a wish for books that people could
drowse through in a way they can't with Theosophy. It is vitally necessary
to have sufficient interest for objective facts to rid ourselves of
certain feelings and sensations we have had in the past; if we allow
ourselves to drowse as we confront this or that theme in spiritual science
that ought to engage our interest, we would stay awake only in the case
of those matters most easily absorbed. And such a lack of objective
interest leads to an inevitable development. The coupon cutter feels
obligated to listen to the lecture, for lecture-going is part of a proper
lifestyle, but he suffers tortures because of his total lack of interest.
But he is gradually relieved; he enjoys himself, and sometimes even
falls soundly asleep, a condition he doesn't have to guard against unless
he starts snoring. All of this is a perfectly natural development.

Now let us picture this process transferred
to another kind of consciousness. Let us imagine a person who lacks
the needed full interest in the concrete details of spiritual science.
He feels that he is listening best when he is not paying attention to
details. I have even heard the comment, “Oh, what he is saying
isn't the important thing; it's the ‘vibrations,’ ‘the
way it's said.’” The lecturer can often discern this type
of drowsy listening in the listener's appearance. This is exactly the
same situation on the soul level as that of the coupon clipper in external
life. For if attention is being given to “vibrations” instead
of to what spiritual science is offering, it turns the hearer's interest
inward, as happens when the coupon clipper is enjoying himself. It may
be that such a person describes himself between lectures as taking an
interest in what the lecture offered, and claims interest in this or
that theme. But he is really gossiping about his or someone else's previous
incarnations. He has, in other words, shifted everything to an interest
in himself in an identical internalizing process. We really see the
same process here that goes on in the external life of the coupon clipper,
who falls asleep at every lecture, in the case of those who feel that
details are not important, but who claim an interest in spiritual science
they really lack. So they fall asleep as to details, and their interest
is transferred to their own personalities.

Things of this sort have to be made clear.
If we were to see them clearly, much that happens would not occur.

I would like to see you make a study of the
nuance levels of consciousness as I have tried to describe them. The
last example given should perhaps not be taken amiss now or at any other
time. There is no question that the movement of spiritual science is met
with a good deal of sleepiness, while a strong tendency to self-enjoyment
gets the upper hand, with the result that spiritual science is used
only as a means of indulging in self-enjoyment. But we want to concentrate
on nuances of consciousness, for unless we do so we will not be able
to achieve an understanding of necessity, chance, and providence.